Münster, a Mennonite family of Hamburg, Germany. Its ancestor, Hans Münster (1588-1626), was probably a farmer in the Wilster Marsch, Holstein, Germany. His son Elias Jansen Münster moved to Glückstadt, from where his son Jan Elias Münster (d. 1716) moved first to Hamburg, then to Altona, where he was a merchant and deacon of the Mennonite church, as were his sons and grandsons Herman, Jan Elias, Peter, and Peter Münster, Jr. Most of them took part in whaling and equipped whaling vessels, as had Jan Elias in 1681-1714. Whether Cornelis Jan Munster (d. 1717), a cloth merchant, who in 1676 moved from Bommel, Dutch island of Overflakkee, to Rotterdam and here in 1679 became a preacher of the Flemish congregation and 1688-1691 served as elder, was a member of the same family, is doubtful.